Forget me not
by Mysteriol
Summary: [gREV, canon] At 2 in the morning, Kai pays an unexpected visit to the comatose redhead Captain. He pulls down his hood, stares at the beeping monitor. "Dammit, Tal, wake up."


**Forget me not**

**gREV, canon. **At 2 in the morning, Kai pays an unexpected visit to the comatose redhead Captain. He pulls down his hood, stares at the beeping monitor. "Dammit, Tal, wake up."

* * *

a/n:

follows the gREV storyline which covers up the in-between of how Wolborg ended up by Tala's bed, and covers the gray area of the memorable scene (how could we all forget?) where Kai paid the comatose Tala a visit by his bed.

I covered this before, but why not again?

* * *

The hospital was silent as a graveyard.

Kai wouldn't blame anybody else; after all, nobody saved for him would had the guts to pay a visit to an almost-dead patient at this time of the day. Somewhere down the empty corridor, he could barely make out the visible lines of the wall clock showing nearly 2 in the morning.

He wasn't tired. God, he hadn't slept well in a couple of months now to even remember how it felt like to be alive and refreshed again. He could no longer tell the difference between his waking dreams and sleeping nightmares – they all felt the same ever since the advent of the championships.

Now, as his footsteps made distinct sounds (pitter, patter) against the cold tile floors, he willed his eyes to open.

If he wasn't tired, Kai wondered why he had so much difficulty keeping his eyes from opening lately.

He didn't even have to stare into the mirror to make out the ugly, uncharacteristic eyebags wearing thick under his eyes – so unlike the well-kempt, distinctively handsome Hiwatari heir everybody watched like a hawk and admired like God.

If this was the result of not sleeping in days now, he could only blame it on the nightmares that claimed him each time his consciousness submitted to the darkness. Everytime he closed his eyes, all he saw was Dranzer and the prophetic image of his phoenix burning up in flames and dying. And beside the beautiful flaming bird, something else beside it that his mind conjured in sleep bothered him…

It was Wolborg, frozen in ice. In the exact same image, Wolborg had frozen solid, and in the next second, the ice had shattered into a million pieces like hard diamond, claiming everything in sight, together with the wolf itself…and inevitably, unmistakably, its owner.

Kai caught his breath, steadied himself against the wall as he tried to rid the image from his mind again.

This needed to stop. He was going insane.

He was _not _going to lose anybody. Not today, not tomorrow. Not anytime soon. He would make sure of it.

Out of the corner of his eyes, amidst darkness, his breath snatched from his throat.

Ward 92, Ward 91…

_Keep walking, Kai, keep walking. _

Ward 90.

He paused. The door facing him now was slightly opened. A small, almost non-visible smile actually threatened his otherwise tightly set lips locked in a perpetual trademark frown.

_The Blitzkieg Boys were here. _

He pushed himself in, just a slightly bit, enough to catch the sight of a strange animal plushie placed alongside a bizzarely-shaped bouquet of…half-crumpled red daisies on the bedside desk. He fingered the small card attached to the well-wishing bouquet, and his small smile only increased in folds as his eyes read the lines down easily.

_Yo Captain, take care ya hear? The team needs you…and we can't exactly deal with Ian a few more days anymore we can while waiting for you to wake, so hurry up and get your ass out of that stinky bed! - Bryan & Spencer. _

_TALA! Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT listen to anything those thugs try to tell you. I am behaving well – washing the dishes like you ask me, and putting away my things after play…I'm half-way through GTA5 and waiting for you to get back up so we can be partners in crime! I'm stuck in this stupid level..so you gotta hurry because I can't get through this alone…Bryan & Spencer are being pricks and won't leave me alone! I need you, Tala! - many brotherly hugs, Ian. _

"Hn." Kai actually managed a soft chuckle, a strange foreign sound to his own ears that he hadn't heard in almost…months now. His gaze traveled sideways…and fell upon a few more bouquet of flowers – roses, dandelions and other pretty lilac hues of forget-me-nots. All well-wishes from all the other Beyblade teams… White Tigers, Bladebreakers… Hilary, Lee, Ray…even Daichi and Tyson whom once swore their undying hatred to the redhead Captain actually wrote personal notes in those cards.

These annoying gnats…

Kai fingered the last of the forget-me-nots, picked one stalk in his hand, and softened a sigh.

It wasn't until that point that his shoulders hunched lowering his hood over his head that he realized how tired, how fatigued, how thoroughly exhausted he now felt. His shoulders weighed a billion tonnes; they felt like bricks. His eyes were almost glued shut from zero sleep; his knees were slowly giving way from training non-stop in the dish now since…He could not remember.

But most of all…

He stared down at the forget-me-not, which seemed to blissfully rest easily in his palm.

…Most of all, something actually _hurt, _in his heart.

He couldn't tell what, or why.

But, for some reason, as he now turned, to finally stare at the redhead lying comatose; senseless; motionless, on the white bed, looking the palest, most fragile, vulnerable, helpless he had seen the Captain since they had known each other since the abbey days during their childhood…

For some reason, his heart churned, and his head hurt like hell.

And he couldn't explain the sudden clenching of his fists, or the reason why his blood coursed through his veins, and he had the abrupt urge to want to slam his fist somewhere, into someone, especially into the face of a certain Beyblader who had been responsible for putting the redhead into this state.

And part of it, Kai wondered why he felt like it was his fault in the first place.

Ultimately, he settled for a punch into the desk in front of the redhead.

Shit, he felt so helpless.

"Dammit, Tal, say something." He whispered, so soft, he could have imagined he had not said it at all under his breath.

_Tal. _

He couldn't remember the last time he had called the redhead that… not since the last time they were in the abbey attempting umpteenth escapes together, plotting means and ways to anger the guards just to see the peeved looks on their face…and Kai would live up to a hundred, released Black Dranzer, destroyed the entire abbey, and still not forget the countless nights he had spent with his childhood _friend _in that abbey jail, nursing mutual whipped scars on their backs, biting back unshed tears from their eyes, and sharing the most inappropriate jokes at the most inappropriate times simply to keep each other from going on; to survive.

_Tal. _

Kai couldn't take the silence anymore. The more he thought, the memories hurt – not so of the Black Dranzer effect erasing his memories, more so because as he let the memories seep in gently one by one, the weight of his heart was threatening to sink him entirely.

He held his head.

"Fuck, _Tal,_" he breathed, "wake up."

That redhead was usually so bossy, so arrogant, that it made the bluehead want to punch him right in the face.

Those moments where they traded verbal blows so antagonizing that Kai simply wanted to walk up to the Captain and lodge a fist in that stuck-up face.

He usually talked so much; boasted about his victories, boasted about being the perfect soldier, having the strongest all-round team competing in the championships, and how he had only led with the best example he could set for himself as Captain. Always "pffting", always smirking, always grunting with irritance at the slightest thing, picking senselessly on Daichi, Tyson and almost every member of the Bladebreakers like they were naught but minions in his eyes.

Now, now… he was so _quiet. _

Kai took a step closer to the redhead, eyed him thoroughly. (Trying all his best to ignore the pain searing through his heart.)

Still not letting go of the single stalk of forget-me-not in his hand, he used it to gently graze it down the bandage plastered across the redhead's eye, making a slow trail down to his shoulders draped with the white hospital blankets, to his fingers plugged in with the beeping tubes that seriously scared the shit out of Kai because he could not for the life of him understood what the doctors were doing to the redhead.

_Beep, beep, beep, beep. _

God, it was so annoying.

But Kai would rather it annoy the hell out of him, than to hear it stop. God forbid, he would rather it just keep beeping if it meant it kept the redhead alive.

Kai lowered his gaze, and bent closer to the redhead, so close until he was staring right into Tala's closed eyes.

Then, in sheer exhaustion, feeling nothing else, he sank into the chair in utter despondenceright next to the comatose Captain.

"Dammit, Tal, it wasn't meant to be like this."

Shit, he was talking to the wall. Tala was silent like a stone beside him.

He kept going.

"Not just this…Since the abbey days, since Black Dranzer, running away from the abbey, leaving you behind, and then this..now, everything…" The bluehead couldn't stop. It was as if he was on drugs, and he had gone too far to turn back now in his words.

"_Fuck_, Tal, _fuck_."

…As if those words escaping relentlessly from his lips now made sense of everything; spoke volumes in sentences he could not string for years now, and was inside of him for way too long.

As if, that single _Fuck, _albeit vulgar, and characteristically of his usual brash and aloof style, sufficed as a substitute for a thousand "I'm sorry" he should have said years ago.

Apologies he owed for a year too many now.

All too late.

"Shit." Kai blinked, unbelievingly at the single lone tear that had crystallized against the stalk of the forget-me-not.

It was…his?

God, he was losing it.

He blamed it on the lack of sleep.

He hastily stood up, pulled the hood over his face again, and stared one last time longingly at the redhead in front of him.

His heart seared again, familiarly this time. The sear of pain, of a long-lost friendship since childhood, of unspoken apologies, of long nights both friends spent weathering battle scars and tears and literal blood together in the bloodbath of the abbey.

It's been more than a decade now, if he counted carefully.

Strange how some times don't change, even with time and distance.

Perhaps it's true, he mused, that they say friendships forged when young are the most impressionable and fiercest.

Even now paired as tag-team partners, Kai had kept his distance from the redhead Captain on the pretense that he had no single ounce of their childhood together sitting in his memory stream. But it had been difficult.

Difficult day in and out training with the Blitzkrieg Boys pretending he didn't feel a sense of connection to them…After all he had met them and observed their hardships in the abbey all when they were mere five-year-olds. God, he even knew Bryan and Spencer when they first joined the abbey. He was there when he witnessed their first whipping session from the guards. He had been the one who had used his heir-status to appeal to his grandfather to lessen the number of whipcounts on them, albeit never working.

It had been so difficult to train with them now still, putting a wedge in between him and all of these strongheaded, brazen, brave boys when he had personally seen what they had all went through together…

They were so alike…and it had been so difficult to close an eye on them and pretend he didn't feel a thing or remember anything. Whether it was when they offered to buy back pizza for him after a long hard day of training for the championships now, whether it was when Spencer threw a water bottle in his direction for him to drink up because he simply _cared_, whether it was when Ian spoke annoying knock-knock jokes and Kai had to muster all his strength not to laugh outwardly because Ian's face was just funny as hell, whether it was that bottle of sleeping pills he knew Bryan had so kindly placed by his table before he went to bed because the taller boy had understood the bluehead never slept much…

These boys cared. No hows, no hidden agenda, but just that.

And their Captain…

Kai's head hurt. He was overthinking again.

He threw one final glance at the redhead sleeping so peacefully on the white bed, unmoving, and had to steady himself with his hands on the pale hospital walls.

He knew he wouldn't forgive himself, if his Captain; his _friend _didn't awake from coma ever again.

(And he knew for sure his heart would never stop searing with this kind of pain. God, he never want to feel like this one more time.)

"God, Tal, you better wake up. Just so at least I can beat you one last time in the dish like I promised you years ago before I left."

Holding in his breath, Kai fingered the scarf around his neck, and slowly reached into his pockets to feel for something that belonged rightfully to the owner in the bed.

Finally clicking the hospital door shut after him, Kai pulled the hood up over his hair, and made a swift exit from the hospital.

* * *

"Daichi! Stop making so much noise in the infirmary! You're going to wake everyone up in the hospital!" Hilary exclaimed with much irritation at the tiny boy.

"Awww, come on Hil, I wish I could, but Captain Taley-Taley ain't going to wake up anytime now it seems." Daichi pulled a face, stuck out his tongue, but not before Tyson punched him lightly in the cheek.

"Stop it, Daichi, this is serious business here." Tyson chided the younger boy.

Hilary went about her routine to empty the trash can, but not before squinting her eyes, and bending to pick something up from the bin.

"Hey, what's this?"

It was a stalk of forget-me-not – crumpled, almost snapped into two, but still beautiful with its lilac hues atop.

Hilary eyed it for a minute longer, before taking steps towards the comatose Captain.

She carefully placed it beside the pillows for the redhead, but not before making out Tala's beyblade sitting by his head…and something else.

Hilary paused, something glistening in her eyes.

She fingered the white fabric for a long while.

Unmistakably, it was _his. _

In that moment, she understood.

"What are you doing, Hil?" Tyson asked from afar. "Why are you wrapping a white scarf around Tala's neck? Whose is that? Hey, that looks familiar."

"Yes, it does." Hilary stepped back and observed the redhead after she was done with the task.

Comatosed, the Captain still looked incredibly good, if not, more strikingly handsome with the new accessory around his neck.

"He's going to wake up soon, right?" Ray asked from another direction.

Hilary nodded, unfailingly, unfalteringly.

She was not lying.

"Yes, he will."

**FIN **

* * *

a/N:

God, I miss Beyblade. So much, it's insane. Review, review, nevertheless, and I may consider making a multi-chaptered fic of my favorite tag-team boys, which has been brewing in my head for a while now.


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